Editor's note: Every day this week, we are publishing reflections of Bloody Sunday, its aftermath and the march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., to commemorate the march's 50th anniversary. Find more Selma reflections.

An item on the daily rundown of the local college read as follows: "Meditation Canceled Due to Snow."

I could picture the normally calm Trappist monks near my home town in Massachusetts being flummoxed by reading that. Meditation has been one thing that is even more doable than the mail carrier's rounds: stayed by neither sleet, nor hail or, in this case, by a measly five inches of pure, driven snow.

The United States is one of nine nations Amnesty International lists as "persistent executioners." The others? China, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Sudan, Bangladesh and North Korea. The European Union bans the death penalty among its member nations. A Lebanese justice minister has been quoted as saying that "the right to life precedes everything" in explaining his opposition to the practice.